A husband and wife owned the dog, which attacked them March 13, according to the report. The husband was treated for wounds the day of the attacks, but the wife suffered more severe injuries, it said.

Health Officer Frank Wilpert, contacted by NJ.com earlier this week, referred any questions about the incident to the Mount Olive Police Department.

It was not immediately clear from the report how the pit bull was acting when approached by officers, prompting them to shoot it. A spokesman for the police department told NJ.com earlier this week he was trying to contact the department's chief for more information, but the chief was out of the office this week.

In such cases, advocates for the dogs are quick to argue they're unfairly portrayed as vicious. In a comment on the NJ.com story about the Christmas Day incident, reader Jennifer Lynn wrote "Here
we go again! Any breed of dog could attack a cat! I have 2 poodles who
don't like cats! The media should be ashamed for always making headlines
when 'pit bulls' are at fault. Don't you have anything better to do???"

The American Veterinary Medical Association wrote last year that the pit pull is actually one of several dogs — also including German shepherds, rottweilers, chow chows, Jack Russell terriers, collies, springer spaniels, Saint Bernards and Labrador retrievers — commonly identified in biting attacks.

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"If you consider only the much smaller number of cases that resulted in very severe injuries or fatalities, pit bull-type dogs are more frequently identified," it wrote.

But it also said such reports might be best explained by the popularity of the breeds in victims' communities, reporting biases, or issues surrounding how the dogs are treated.

"Owners of pit bull-type dogs deal with a strong breed stigma, however controlled studies have not identified this breed group as disproportionately dangerous," the association wrote. "The pit bull type is particularly ambiguous as a 'breed' encompassing a range of pedigree breeds, informal types and appearances that cannot be reliably identified. Visual determination of dog breed is known to not always be reliable. And witnesses may be predisposed to assume that a vicious dog is of this type."

"It should also be considered that the incidence of pit bull-type dogs' involvement in severe and fatal attacks may represent high prevalence in neighborhoods that present high risk to the young children who are the most common victim of severe or fatal attacks," the association continued. "And as owners of stigmatized breeds are more likely to have involvement in criminal and/or violent acts — breed correlations may have the owner's behavior as the underlying causal factor."